Whispirit Textiles

September 8, 2015 By Lee Leave a Comment

On The Road

Now that we are on the road traveling to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for the Western Design Conference, it feels good to just drink in the beauty of the western skies and mountains and to feel the coolness of Fall.

It has been a busy summer designing new fabrics and new apparel designs to showcase the characteristics of these alpaca textiles. We have yet to decide which of these items we will enter into the design competition at the WDC. Both will be on the runway, with four other new looks, on Thursday evening.

Possibility #1

We call this the Osita coat. I wanted to make a fabric that contrasted the same rich blacks, browns and greys we see in our dog Osita’s fur. Osita means “little bear” in Spanish. To make this fabric I combined the fibers of Jazzman ( a true black), Cinnamon (yep, that lovely cinnamon color) and Sustantivo (grey). What you can’t appreciate from this photo is the remarkable soft handle of this fabric; it’s a lot like the softness of O’s fur.

Possibility #2

Now this is a different kind of jacket altogether.

Inspired by a long drive through NM and CO after glorious rains brought sunflowers and other wild flowers into bloom, I call this “Just Add Water.” I first used pastels to practice paint my design on the paper pattern pieces. After I cut out the blue silk, I felted the same design, using dyed fibers and yarns. I finished by painting with silk luminescent paints that add shimmer or water and light. Clouds, blue skies, sunflowers and a dragonfly.

Tomorrow, Wyoming for the first time. It will be fun! I can’t wait to see which jacket gets entered and how we do.

Sandy

August 24, 2015 By Lee Leave a Comment

Getting Ready for Fall

I cannot believe it is the last full week of August. Where did the summer go? I imagine those who have returned to the classroom in whatever capacity are wondering the same thing. The last week of August means we will soon learn if Whispirit is selected as a finalist for the Martha Stewart American Made competition this year. This year’s finalists selection ends September 14. One factor for consideration we believe is how many people “like” your Martha Stewart American Made nomination page. If you like what Whispirit is doing click here and click on Share This Maker With Your Friends. Selected as a finalist or not we have enjoyed seeing all of this year’s nominations. The creativity and entrepreneurial spirit and talent that abounds in this great country of ours is simply amazing.

The last full week of August also means that we are finalizing our preparation for the Western Design Conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We are first time artists this year and the excitement around here is building. Although we were juried in on several of our garments, a high point of the conference is the awarding of prizes for a single item you created for the conference. Sandy’s creativity has been flowing for weeks. I think she has finally decided on one (decided may be too strong a word with two weeks to go). Second big event is the style show. We will have six “looks” on the runway. Of course, which six seems to be a daily question. We have even practiced how to set up our 16′ x 10′ retail booth in our chalked-in area in front of the “fabric design center” (aka: the garage).

If you get Mountain Living magazine, be sure to look at the beautiful 56 page ad at the end of the August edition. Whispirit’s 1/4 page ad on page 23 of the WDC source book contains a picture of our most popular jacket, Spirit Wind (crimson) Kasode.

The ad already has prompted requests to purchase the jacket, which now is sold out! (We only make a few of our designs for inventory). Which brings me to a recurring problem: Consistent resources for our designs. With this surge in requests for a specific design and a specific silpaca fabric, we turned to our yarn sources only to discover it is no longer made (yes, for those of you who don’t traffic yarn, it is a fickle and constantly changing marketplace).

So what do handmade design artists do in such circumstances? Out comes the white suri roving (courtesy of Beth Brown of Odelia Design) with just the correct sheen and the dye pot. A little of this and a little of that into the pot. Boil, separate, dry, and Voila!! Our new silpaca, Raspberry Ribbon. You can buy it at the Whispirit Shop

Ribbons of Raspberry — New Raspberry Ribbon

Check out our Martha Stewart American Made nomination……. see you next week……. Lee

July 28, 2015 By Lee 2 Comments

The Alpaca Batt Channel

So I imagine you have been waiting to hear what happens next after Sandy is done skirting… Once we have separated good from unusable fleece (at least for our purposes), we bag, box and ship the fleece to one of the mills we use for processing. Because we require the processing to be done in particular ways necessary to make the drapy smooth felt in our garments, only a handful of the mills that process alpaca fibers are able to perform our work.

WIN_20150728_120700 — Evergreen’s brown and white batt

Processing for us means the mill washes, dries and then cards the alpaca fiber to remove coarser fibers and get the fleece fibers all running in the same direction. We have learned that 100% alpaca is not best for our garments and accessories, so the mills blend 25% merino with 75% alpaca during the carding process. What comes off of the carding machine is called a batt. Our batts are extremely thin, usually under 3 ounces; reminds me of a spider web it is so light. For us, the milling process stops there and the batts are returned. Pictured to the left is a gorgeous batt made for us by Evergreen Fleece Processing.

From the batts we design our fabrics. Depending on what we are going to make, the batts of fiber are placed on top of a scrim or stabilizer of different grades of silk, cotton or burlap. We have named each of our fabrics: Silpaca, Silcotton. Also at this point we add whatever accents Sandy’s design calls for.

All the fiber, accents and stabilizer are now run through the FeltLOOM. The intended use of the fabric and the feel and effect we are trying to create will dictate how many times we run the fabric through the loom. Typically this takes 12 or more runs through the machine.

And then, as they say in France, “voila!” Our fabric is ready. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, you can buy this fabric and others in the Whispirit shop. Right now we are offering our hand-dyed and felted Raspberry Silpaca at a special price.

Have a great week…………. Lee